MPAA Gets College Kids To Create Free Propaganda

from the but-I-thought-if-it's-free,-it's-stolen? dept

For years, the entertainment industry has attempted to use school programs to help get kids to believe their propaganda about file sharing. While there's little evidence that unauthorized file sharing actually hurts the industry, and the numbers that the industry throws out about how much unauthorized file sharing costs it are easily proven as bogus, the industry still thinks that schools should be teaching students about ways to protect its outdated business models. Both the MPAA and the RIAA have created educational programs, where industry representatives go into schools to give extremely one-sided presentations that often ignore things like fair use or the basic economics of content. The latest may be even worse. Apparently, the MPAA has convinced a student group called "Students In Free Enterprise" (SIFE) that operates at a number of universities around the world, to have student film makers create propaganda public service commercials about how downloading harms the movie industry. TorrentFreak, where we learned of this, highlights some of the more ridiculous results. No matter what you think of the videos, you have to wonder why students are being asked to create one-sided videos for a specific commercial interest as a student project. In the meantime, we recall that one of the lessons that the MPAA in-school project was teaching kids was "If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it." It would seem then, by the MPAA's own logic, these PSAs are "stolen."